America’s abandonment of Palestine is a challenge to South Africa

Is South Africa among those countries which are standing aside as the world is confronted with illegal moves by the Trump administration to facilitate Israel’s complete annihilation of Palestine? Notwithstanding the fact that the ANC-led government of President Cyril Ramaphosa has stuck by its decision to downgrade the South African Embassy in Tel Aviv, not much more is evident in defence of Palestinian rights.

It is disconcerting to see South Africa apparently looking on in abject silence while reports of Palestinian homes being demolished by Israel reveal that illegal land-grabs are continuing at a frightening rate. Such silence is surely not an option at a time when UN investigator Michael Lynk has warned that Israel is moving rapidly to annex yet more of the occupied West Bank as it intensifies illegal settlement-building on Palestinian land.

Speaking to Mondoweiss during a week-long fact-finding visit to the region, Lynk claimed that Israel’s settlement-building is at its “highest level” in recent years. “It’s moving much more rapidly and on the horizon is something much more dramatic,” said the UN’s special rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory. “The public statements made by senior American diplomats in favour of the long-expressed wish by senior Israeli political leaders, including virtually every member of the Israeli cabinet, in favour of annexation of some parts of the West Bank has only gotten louder. There is a greater normalisation of the concept of........